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Introduction: The Holocaust represents a seminal event in the annals of medicine. For the first time in history, doctors played a prominent role in the extreme abuse of medical rights, violation of medical obligation to patients, infringement of patient autonomy, forced and unnecessary invasive and damaging procedures for political purposes and the ultimate injustice of involuntary euthanasia. Physicians provided the legitimacy, know-how and momentum that allowed these processes to take place in a symbiotic relationship with the political establishment during the Nazi era. It is critical that modern day physicians be aware of what transpired during this period. For that purpose, we describe a multiyear program bringing Israeli physicians on a learning mission to relevant sites of medical involvement and complicity in Nazi era crimes. These guided educational tours, under the auspices of the Israel Medical Association, originally took place in Poland and more recently, alternately visit Germany and Poland. At all sites, background information on medical practice during the Nazi era is provided, as well as ethical discussions on the merits (positive) or demerits (negative) of physicians who played a role at those particular locations. In addition to site visits, background discussions and lectures are provided to achieve a more comprehensive, deeper and more profound understanding of the issues. Emphasis is placed on learning from examples with relevance to modern day medicine, thus providing the principles from which participants can grow to become more ethical, principled and sensitive physicians as well as individuals. The tour includes formal and emotional ceremonies when relevant at extermination sites where physicians were directly involved, as well as focus groups allowing and encouraging emotional expression and catharsis. The critical role of personal growth during the tour is emphasized with both pre-tour and post-tour meetings providing buffering on both ends. Participants and staff, as well as documented feedback over the years, attest to the utility and profound value of these learning and growth-oriented medical missions.

Introduction: The majority of the German medical institutions and nearly half of the clinicians during the Nazi regime provided unwavering support to the distorted Nazi views on health and disability. Leading physicians were an integral part of the atrocities carried out during that era, with some of them having a vital role in executing the ideology of the "final solution". The names of Carl Clauberg and Walter Stoeckel, two notable doctors in the fields of obstetrics and gynecology, were also linked with the third Reich. Both of these physicians, collaborated, each in his own way, with the Nazi regime, which tainted their legacy indefinitely. The two received professional honor for their contribution to the fields of obstetrics and gynecology, which were unrelated to their Nazi past, after their names were linked in the form of eponyms to surgical procedures and examinations, which they developed. In recent years, as a consequence of their disturbing past, there are increasing arguments which call for erasing their eponyms from the medical lexicon. We, on the contrary, believe that the opposite is true and that maintaining these eponyms will actually enable teaching future generations and serve a dual educational role to both highlight professional and scientific achievements as well as serve as a mark of Cain and warning that professional achievements do not prevent ethical decline. Preserving the name will provide an educational opportunity to teach about the responsibilities that come with professional leadership, which these doctors abused carelessly, in order to prevent history from repeating itself.